Except you forget the part where he burns $80 which is pretty low ev because I don't care how thirsty you are if your buying $80 of drinks your burning money.

This is not taking $80 and putting it back in your wallet.

fwiw I have seen a casino put in a rule that paying up to $20 in off the table food/drink is acceptable.

It was enforced zero times.
Because it came up zero times.
Because people cared zero times.

My room will limit a player to using 10% of his stack to buy stuff but only if their is an objection to the amount he takes off.

This is the kind of thing that if you take to the logical extreme is problematic, but is fine in reasonable amounts. It's completely standard to be able to take small amounts of your chips off the table to buy a drink or food. Both the casino and other players generally want there to be drinking at the table. I'm sure there's a level at which it would be a problem, but I've never seen it arise. It would probably entail someone ordering a round for the table when facing an all in.

I can't be the only person who thinks the villain has a soul read on OP and knows that this is going to cause tilt can I?

Nobody actually thinks or plays like this IRL. He'd have to think he was good, order the drinks, wait for the drinks, pay for the drinks and then make the river decision....Not realistic even in extreme circumstances. The clock will get called long before.

Banning it during a hand is reasonable and I think most players would readily agree to such rules.

The servers you want to tip the most are ones that don't demand payment while you're in a hand, anyway.

Banning it in between hands is fraught with danger and it's difficult to get acceptance because not everyone understands the problem.

In Australia, we pay for drinks prior to receiving them... unlike America where you order first and pay later.

You are making a judgement about what the value of the money taken off the table means to the opponent. You can't know for sure whether or not $80 of drinks/services is really worth $80 to this person, especially when it could be a normal purchase for them, such as an expensive wine or a long massage. Regardless, whether he is squandering the money in your opinion or not, he's taking EV from his opponent. I don't care that he is costing himself money when he does this. I care that he is costing his opponent money.

Banning it during a hand is all I'd need to be happy. It's not okay for purchases to effect the game's strategy element. I could care less about what players do with their money in between hands, and I think most people agree.

So, as I stated in the very similar thread, I'm that guy buying my drinks with my chips. (And as Quadstriker commented, has never come up)

Just so it is clear, it would be really helpful to know who the colossal a-holes are that are going to whine about me buying drinks or tipping the waitress with my chips beforehand, laugh. I think it is humorous that the argument is that I am possibly taking money away from my opponents....feel free to ***** at the waitress for taking your bologna away or whatever.

I also like the idea that someone is facing a bet, and now they will price themselves into call by setting $80 on fire. I love the EV math that uses this and deduces that this is a good plan.

Regardless, if the plan is to drive away people that are drinking....that sounds way more -EV then the possible $5 you might have gotten.

I'm part of "most people" but I will admit that if someone were to do something unusual like win a big pot, tip $300, and leave themselves with $100 behind, I would quickly leave the group of "most people." I, and I think many people, would suspect something fishy is going on like the server and the player chopping up the tip later or something.

To reiterate, I don't think it's a common enough problem to offset the cons of having a rule against it. But if at some point it becomes common, I'm not going to fight rules againstit.

I thought this was going to be the awesome story I once saw posted here where some jerkface bet big on the river, and the guy ordering the drink gave the waitress $170 and called with the $10.


Now that is how it is done ladies and gentlemen.

According to many people in this thread, there would be absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If someone did that to me, I would reflect and assume I must have been a colossal douchebag for someone to even think of doing that to me.

Would be a cooler example if he gave the cocktail waitress a $175 tip, tossed $5 in the pot all in, and then gave the cocktail waitress a kiss and told her he'd be home late tonight.

Don’t be a nit. If he bought ten beers that’s different

I once heard a story in Vegas (anecdotal so take it for what it's worth) of someone facing an all-in bet at the river against opponent he dislike, calling the waitress over, tipping her most of his stack, then proceed to call the all in with the small remainder. Supposedly the floor allowed it. WTF.

Wasn't quite sure how this thread reached 42 comments ... Room rules apply of course.

IMO no chips that 'are currently facing action' should be allowed off the table. This would mean that if a player is facing an all-in to call that the chips stay on the table. If it's PF/Flop and there's no action .. pay the bill if it's allowed!

I know the servers want to keep moving along and obviously you don't want to encounter one of these crazy spots that have been suggested but it's pretty simple ... If the chips are currently 'at risk' then they aren't available to depart. GL

Ive been playing poker for a long time and have seen just about every dumb angle attempted, and have never once seen someone try to use paying for a drink off their stack as an angle to rathole mid hand.

At most rooms you are lucky if the waitress comes back on the same day you placed your drink order. Somehow getting a waitress to show up right at a key moment where you could save $5 by paying for your beer sounds harder than clocking a roulette wheel.

Every cardroom I have ever been in allows paying for your drink at any time using your chipstack. Im sure it occasionally makes a difference in a hand when it happens, but its so random that worrying about it seems insanely nitty. If players somehow started colluding with wait staff to rathole I guess it would be easy to institute a rule fix but this just simply does not happen. Yeah, if I jam on someone with the nuts and they pay $5 then call its a minor annoyance but the ability to get drunk off your stack is worth way more to the game than that $5 so whatever. If someone did try to angle by buying $175 in beer at a critical moment then I could see the floor getting involved.

As long as its one drink, for that person, then who cares? im not a nit tho so i dont even fathom these things.

also in 8 years of playing have never seen 1 person complain about paying from stack.

i imagine this probably isnt real lol. ive heard it before though, like the BBJP old woman mucking famous story that also 99% didnt happen.

the man can tip from his pocket.

no floor would allow absolutely destroying the integrity of the game of poker. if its real the floor is no better than trash.

You people should come down to South Florida where most of the poker rooms are in racinos and players can take chips off their stacks during play to make bets on the horse and/or dog races. And I'm not talking about just $5 or $10 as one would take for a drink.

No you see that cannot happen since people in this thread assured me that was ridiculous and would never happen.

No one said that. Just that we have never seen them do it during a specific hand where ratholing is advantageous. I see people pay $20-$40 for table massages all the time. But the money leaving the table is incidental. They are buying a massage first and any money leaving the table is a secondary side effect that casinos allow because the money goes straight to them. You seem fixated on the loophole this presents, but youre trying to solve a problen that simply doesnt exist, which is people using this method of paying for things as a way to intentionally deny the money to their opponent in a specific spot.

I had a guy give the cocktail server $75 for a Corona in the middle of our 3 way all in hand (in which i had the nuts) It was hard for me to complain about not getting another $75 when the pot was nearly $2K but the point is, theoretically, he could have been friendly with the cocktail server and just have easily given her 3 black chips mid hand to "hold" if he was uncertain about winning the pot. There is no rule against it and that fact invites this type of issue although most would not operate in this way.